How to get emails from your Yahoo! mail to your mobile?

Yahoo mail allows you to Setup Mail Forwards to any other e-mail like GMail, mobee or something else.

NOTE: Yahoo mail does not have the option of Forwarding a Copy of your e-mail, essentially it means that it will not store your e-mail if you setup a mail forward. It just forwards the email and deletes it.

Refer to Forwarding Yahoo! Mail on how to Forward a Yahoo mail to another e-mail account.

Here are the Quick Steps!

Login to Yahoo! mail

Go to Options => POP Access and Forwarding

Enter the e-mail address to which you want to forward your yahoo mail.

You can give your_mobile_number@mobee.in here. If you are not registered yet, Get one it's free. Visit http://mobee.in

Yahoo! doesn't seem to leave a copy of your e-mail in Yahoo! if you setup a mail forward like this - so know what you are doing!

There are other alternative ways of getting Yahoo mail on your mobile - just follow the article below!

Your verification mail will be forwarded back to your e-mail that you have registered on mobee - so that you can activate the forwards on Yahoo!

On Verificaiton - Yahoo! forwards all the e-mails to mobee e-mail, which u can access it on ur mobile.

Is there any alternative way to get my Yahoo! mails on mobile?

There are two ways you can do this:

If you have an other web mail account (say Gmail) - you can do one of the following:

1) Setup a mail forward in Yahoo! to your Gmail account - as explained above

This will send all your Yahoo mails onto your Gmail account - you can easily manage all your e-mails in Gmail with Labels & Filters.

Refer to How to get emails from Gmail to your mobile? for more details on how to do this.

2) Setup a mail fetcher in Gmail to fetch all your emails from other mail accounts

Read more on how to configure your Gmail mail fetcher in this article http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=21288

Its quite easy! Once you configure this - Gmail will fetch all your e-mails into your Gmail account.

From here you can follow the How to get emails from Gmail to your mobile? to setup your mail forwards to mobee.

Refer to mobee How-To articles on how to control which e-mails you want to receive on your mobile.

10 Type of Startups You Should Never Join

Ref: http://venturevilla.blogspot.com/2008/07/10-type-of-startups-you-should-never.html
A lot of us get fascinated by Startups and always relate startup with challenging work, open-culture, rewards,innovation and fast growth. But there are startups which somehow are not good to work with due to different reasons. There are some basic ingredients which are very much required for any good startup. I am highligthing 10 type of startups which are not worth exploring ( The idea here is not to criticize startups but to make entrepreneurs/job-seekers aware of various sensitive issues):

1. Sharing " Not our Policy " - Some startups do have this kind of mentality. They think their idea and participation is the foremost and ultimate thing. This mentality is evident right from the beginning. Even during initial interaction these startups keep on asking thousands of question to you. But when you ask few questions,they become annoyed or decline to answer politely. Openness is one of the foremost rule of any business. Any startup is run by a set of people,and gauging their attitude and mind-set is very important. The people with wrong mindset won't share important details like revenues, sales target, available funding, growth-path etc. with you even at very advanced stage. Never-ever think of joining any such Startup. These people won't be fair with you during any stage of your engagement.

2. We all are leaders, but can't pay for your tea : Few startups do have good people as founder members, but they can't take any decision. They look for others before taking final call over any matter. They believe in several rounds of discussion even for very small issues. Most of them don't have guts to face any adverse situation and failure. They believe that group-thinking is always required and hence take huge amount of time to solve petty issues. Successful Startups are known for their responsiveness and agility. The top-management is very fast at taking decisions and always don't require consent of whole group. There are few cheer-leaders who take decisions quickly, keeping in mind internal and external factors. These startups are typically very slow moving and you may not enjoy working there.

3. We are the best, you can't compete : The founder members believe that they are best at doing everything. Anyone joining new will always be second to them. These people never trust others and always believe in doing work by themselves. Any startup which wants to grow faster should get good people and give them quality work. Any good founder should hire people who are smarter than him/her. The growth of any startup lies in the hand of every person associated with them directly or indirectly. Founder members should always groom future leaders within the company. Shared responsibilities and rewards would always help startup to scale-up faster. Any startup which gives less priority to meritocracy should be avoided without giving any second thought.

4. Vision Statement is only for website : You should never join a startup which thinks that Vision Statement is just a statement. If founder members are not visionaries then definitely that is not the right place to work at. The passion of founders should be visible at various forums. They should work towards achieving higher growth and increasing value for every stakeholders. If the management is quite shaky about a lot of things, then you should be cautious.

5. Employees are just resources : You should never join a startup which thinks that employees are just resources to get their work done. For anybody, decision to join a startup is quite difficult and hence startup should provide very healthy environment. Every employee should be given due attention and he should feel priviledged of being part of a great team. There should be sense of belonging and employees should be happy being part of small team.

6. We don't follow any policy : If any startup boasts that they don't follow any internal policies and they are very flexible, then you should become cautious. Lack of policies creates confusion and dissatisfaction at later stages. After crossing very initial stage ( i.e. once team grows more than 10 people) startup should figure out and document internal policies. These policies helps in handling a lot of issues quite easily. Also this helps employees/prospective employees to understand company in better manner. Startup should not create a chaos internally after it gains critical mass.

7. Just work for us, don't Think : A startup which restricts creative freedom should be avoided. Typically a lot of people join startups to learn lot of new things quickly. They also want to try out new things/ideas. Some of them want to own their startup at some point of time. If a startup is not providing enough learning opportunities then that is not the right place. Founders should promote innovation and internal ideas.

8. You should not worry for money : A lot of startups tell their employees that they should not worry for money because the work is pretty good. This justification won't work for long-time and shows lack of validated revenue model. Any good business should make profits and should be shared with employees appropriately. In case company is not in a position to provide cash then it should be suitably compensated by stocks, profit-sharing etc. Any company spreading the message that they will pay less and won't compensate by other means should be avoided. This basically shows greediness of founding members.

9. We are Unprofessionals : You should never join a startup which shows high level of unprofessionalism. They don't value time, their dressing sense is horrible, they don't care about their clients, they don't value commitments etc. These kind of people can't scale-up operations to the next level. In business, after crossing initial stage very high level of professionalism is required by each member.

10. Accumulate money as much you want : If the founding members say that startups mean money and success only, then you should be cautious. If people at top are just showing rosy picture then definitely there is some serious problem. A lot of ventures become unsuccessful, but a falied startup also provides huge learning opportunities.

Ten Ways To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

Ten Ways To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

What is a Conversion Rate?

Your conversion rate is a measure of the number of potential customers that go on to buy. In the context of a website, it is usually the percentage of visitors that make a purchase. Many websites concentrate solely on increasing the number of visitors they have, when often they have fairly simple problems with their site that, if solved, would have a huge effect on their conversion rate and improve their site's bottom line at minimal expense.

Improving a website conversion rate can be relatively simple. Here are 10 techniques for doing just that:
10. Make The User's Life Easy

Let's start with something that sounds simple, but apparently is too complex for many companies to get right. The more difficult you make your web site to use, the less people will buy from you.

A well designed website should aim to prevent nobody from buying - to allow 100% of the people who want to buy to do so. So where do they go wrong?

• Accessibility

Making a site accessible is a legal obligation in many countries. Despite that, inaccessible websites are still being created. That can affect your sales, depending on how inaccessible you are, as visitors find the site impossible to use and go elsewhere (and end up recommending one of your competitors to their friends as well). A fairly typical inaccessible site could be losing 5% of potential sales because of this. (A really inaccessible website could even prevent search engines indexing it, giving a far higher amount of potential lost sales.)

• Browsers

Many designers only pay attention to Internet Explorer. The justification for this is usually that 99% of the site's users use IE. It never seems to occur to the designers that perhaps the reason they have so few visitors with other browsers is that their site is fundamentally broken - it doesn't work in anything else. Percentages of people not using IE varies from site to site - over 60% of visitors to this site use an alternative browser, for example. The number most often quoted though, is that 80-85% of web users are using IE on Windows, which means that an average site that doesn't work in anything else could easily be losing 15-20% of sales.

• Bold!

What happens when a user decides to buy a product? They add it to a shopping basket. How do they add it? They click a button or link (usually a button). What happens when they can't see the button? They go elsewhere. There are some users who are still uncomfortable scrolling. Having things above the fold is still important. And yet there are still plenty of sites out there with buttons that are too subtle, or don't say the right thing, or are hidden away at the bottom of the page. "Add" is rubbish button text. "Buy" is ok. "Add xxx To Your Basket" is great. "Add xxx to Your Basket" in big letters on a big, bright button, near the top of the page, is even better. Calls to action, like this, don't have to be gaudy or tasteless, but they do have to be obvious and clear. Sites I have worked on where just the call to action was changed have reported anything from a 1% to 30% increase in sales as a result.

• Usability

If your potential customers want to find out more before they buy, can they? Is it obvious to the user where to go to find the technical specs on your products? Are they online at all? Are they in PDF format? Can users even find your products in the first place? This is probably the most common mistake I see on any website - a complete failure to think of what the user wants and needs, and how they might use a site. Plenty of sites have product pages with a photo and some sales patter - and nothing else. Anything from 1% to 99% of potential sales can be lost through poor usability.

When you combine all of the problems above, it becomes fairly clear how easy it is to have a site perform poorly. Make your site accessible, make sure it is usable, make sure it works in common browsers, and make your calls to action clear and unambiguous, and you should be in a position to start converting the people who want to buy.
9. Be Clear, Open and Honest

If you have a product out of stock, say so. Few things annoy users as much as reading all about a product they are after, adding it to a cart, and starting the checkout process - only to find out the product isn't actually available.

The same applies to pricing - a user might spend $100 on a product, but when they find out the shipping is $100 on top of that, they are unlikely to continue the sale. Showing delivery pricing is tricky business, but not impossible. An Ip to Country database will allow you to work out where a user is from and show them a likely delivery cost, for example. If you can't do that, show delivery prices for the countries most appropriate to you - where your products are most often delivered, or for major world regions.
8. Don't Waste Time

One of the biggest mistakes sites make is asking for too much information. Your conversion process may be sale, or it may be a request for information. Either way, don't waste the user's time asking for things you don't need to know. This is, of course, doubly important when it comes to asking for information the user deems private, and that they don't want to give out without good reason.

You don't need to demand the user's email address before letting them download a PDF. You don't need their phone number when they fill out an email enquiry form. A user may not want to buy from you twice - so why make them create an account so they can buy again later before processing their first order? You can give the user the option to do all of these things by all means, but make sure it's not compulsory.
7. Help The User Trust You

Most people are still cautious when buying online, and rightly so. There are plenty of people you really shouldn't give your credit card information to! It's important to give the potential customer every reason to trust you.

An address - bricks and mortar, not a P.O. Box - is a good start. A phone number, with people answering the phone, also helps. Showing a privacy policy and explaining shipping procedures clearly can also help the user to trust you. If you have a SSL certificate, show the "VeriSign Secured" logo to the user.

Design and content also play a part in trust. A poor design gives off an unprofessional feeling. If a company can't afford a decent website, or won't spend the money on it, how can a user be sure their order will be treated with the importance it deserves? If content is inaccurate or badly written, the same applies - show that you take pride in what you do.
6. Have a Clear Returns Policy

Returns on the web are, and are likely to remain, a major issue for consumers. With a bricks and mortar shop, the customer knows where the shop is and that to return the product they simply have to go back there and explain the problem. With the web, this is more of an issue. This is especially true for clothing (where people cannot try things on before buying).

Users are impressed with sites with a good returns policy and are more likely to buy from them. Have people phone for returns - they can then explain the problem to a real person, which is always a good first step. Free return shipping is usually a good option, if commercially viable. People don't like to pay to return things, especially if it is a mistake by the retailer. Finally, give the user plenty of time to return things. 28 days is fairly common, but if it takes you that long to deliver a product, what use is the return policy? 28 days from the date of delivery is better.
5. Keep the User Informed

When somebody buys something online, they want to know when it's going to arrive at their door. People are impatient, after all. Giving them an estimated delivery date during the checkout process is a good start. Emailing them when their product is dispatched is great. Giving them a tracking number if using a delivery service that supports online tracking is even better. Keep the user informed at every step of the process, before and after sale, about as much as you can.

How will this improve your conversion rate? Leaving the customer happy once they have made a sale means they are more likely to speak favourably about you later. They may even recommend you to their friends and within online communities. They are also far more likely to buy from you again.

Think about it like this - if a salesman is doing their absolute best to help you, and to make your life easy, and answering your questions, you might buy what they were selling. If they completely ignored you after you'd bought from them, how would you feel about them? They might well have undone all the good work they put in, because once you'd completed your purchase they see no immediate value in you. A company that shows it cares about their customers, even after they've finished shopping, will make a user far happier and far more likely to return.
4. Offer Different Payment Options

It might sound obvious, but you should offer the user a reasonable selection of methods of payment. Not everybody has a credit card, and those that do don't always want to use them. You don't have to accept cheques, but when deciding on payment methods, consider alternatives to the usual methods. Make the user's life easy and give them what they want.
3. Improve the Value of Visitors

People that buy from you are doing so because they like what it is they see. If a user adds a product to a basket, show them other things they might like as well. If they are viewing a product, the same applies - show them similar items. While they might not buy the product they first saw, other similar ones may not have issues that put them off the first. Upselling and cross-selling are tried and tested sales techniques, and there is no reason not to use them on the web.
2. Be Memorable

A good site will include information. A poor one is just an online catalogue. Information (articles, advice, reviews and so on) all help the user early in their buying process. Users start with research online, just as they do offline. If you can make contact with the user at that stage of their process, and give a favourable impression, there is a good chance that they will come back and buy from you when they finally decide to make a purchase.

Being memorable, and making sure you stick in the user's mind, is dependant on a lot of factors. You must have a USP (see the next point), and branding is important (no good if your visitors remember why you are great but don't remember your name), as well as the quality of your site and information.
1. Know Your USP

Finally, the most important point of all - your Unique Selling Point (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition. If a visitor goes to several sites looking for a product, why would they decide to buy from you instead of somewhere else?

Many companies do not know their USP. Almost all companies have one, but not all of them are aware of it. If you are a family run business, that's a potential USP. Great customer service, low prices, products that can't be bought elsewhere, free delivery, great support - all of these are USPs. Tell your users what yours is. Shout it from the proverbial rooftops.

Rails: "Remember Me" Login Code

Auto-login

Posted by Daniel Wanja on Saturday, February 18, 2006

One of my midnight Rails projects is a “time tracking” application for which I needed auto-login. You know, the “Remember me” check box so that you don’t have to login each time you visit the application. I found a nice article written by Matt McCray describing how this was implemented for TaskThis.com at http://www.mattmccray.com/archives/category/software/rails/taskthis/. Even further he provides the full source code for the application. I didn’t take directly his auto_login.rb module but was greatly inspired by it. I also used the Login Engine Plugin that was not providing this feature, maybe this changed, so it could be simpler, but how simple implementing the auto-login can be. Note these are not the full classes just pertinent code extracts.

1. Remember me

When the user login and checks the “Remember me” checkbox, the :save_login parameter is set, the User instance remember_me method invoked and the :auth_token cookie set.

class AccountController < ApplicationController
 def login
   case @request.method
     when :post
     if @session[:user] = User.authenticate(@params[:user_login], @params[:user_password])
       flash['notice']  = "Login successful"
       if @params[:save_login] == "1"
         @session[:user].remember_me
         cookies[:auth_token] = { :value => @session[:user].remember_token , :expires => @session[:user].remember_token_expires }
       end
       redirect_back_or_default :controller => "time"
     else
       flash.now['notice']  = "Login unsuccessful"
       @login = @params[:user_login]
     end
   end
 end

 def logout
   @session[:user].forget_me if @session[:user]
   @session[:user] = nil
   cookies.delete :auth_token
 end
end

2. login_from_cookie

The next time the user visits the website the “login_from_cookie” filter is triggered. This method checks that the user is not logged in and that the :auth_token cookie is set. If that’s the case the user matching the :auth_token is searched and the token_expiration verified the the user is automatically logged in. Et voila! I guess auto_login would be more appropriate as method name.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_filter :login_from_cookie
  def login_from_cookie
     return unless cookies[:auth_token] && @session[:user].nil?
     user = User.find_by_remember_token(cookies[:auth_token])
     if user && !user.remember_token_expires.nil? && Time.now < user.remember_token_expires
        @session[:user] = user
     end
  end
end

3. the User class

The User class has two methods to set and remove the token from the database. It’s pretty secure as from the token the user cannot be identified without having the salt, the email, and the token expiration, which is most unlikely to be recreated. It could be even more secure by just encrypting some random unique identifier. The only issue I encountered was that the user class always forces the password validation and encryption when saving. For now I just bypass validation and encryption when setting and clearing the remember_me token.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
 def remember_me
   self.remember_token_expires = 2.weeks.from_now
   self.remember_token = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest("#{salt}--#{self.email}--#{self.remember_token_expires}")
   self.password = ""  # This bypasses password encryption, thus leaving password intact
   self.save_with_validation(false)
 end

 def forget_me
   self.remember_token_expires = nil
   self.remember_token = nil
   self.password = ""  # This bypasses password encryption, thus leaving password intact
   self.save_with_validation(false)
 end
end

PHP Akelos: PHP on Rails!

A new PHP based framework offers the benefits of "Ruby on Rails" to PHP developers. Checkout their own version of the famous RoR "Creating a blog in 15 minutes" screencast by DHH, using the Akelos PHP Framework.

"Akelos is a PHP framework for developing database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller pattern (MVC). From the Ajax in the view, to the request and response in the controller, to the domain model wrapping the database the Akelos PHP Framework gives you a pure-PHP development environment built upon programming best practices. To go live, all you need to add is a database and a web server.
Who is the Akelos PHP Framework for?

* PHP developers who want to enjoy writing web applications.
* Ruby on Rails developers who need to code in PHP.
* Developers who want to distribute their work to the mass market of cheap shared hosting.
* Developers who need to write multilingual web applications.

Being port of Ruby on Rails to PHP Akelos is also optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful PHP Code by favoring convention over configuration."

site: http://www.akelos.org